Films @ Dave’s Info Cafe

Random observations on movies

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Elizabeth – The Ultimate Political Thriller

March 18th, 2010 · Film Narrative, Genre

I watched Elizabeth on the TV the other night. Again. It must be the third or fourth time that I have seen the film. It never ceases to amaze me. It is the ultimate political thriller and still manages to rack up the tension even though you know she survives and thrives in the final analysis. The film stars Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth and a host of British character actors including Daniel Craig as a murderous priest and Richard Attenborough. It is directed by Shekar Kapoor. It is a type of film that the British do exceptionally well.

Elizabeth is the story of Elizabeth I just before she came to the throne and her precarious early years as monarch. We are drawn into the dangerous world of 16th century England by means of the first scene where several heretics (protestants in a mainly catholic country) are burnt at the stake. Mary, daughter of Henry VIII, is on the throne and Elizabeth, the offspring of Henry and Ann Boleyn, is in great danger as she is protestant. The threat to her is palpable and many at court are plotting to have her killed. At one point she appears to be on the verge of execution in the Tower of London but manages to stay alive despite the odds.

On the death of Mary, she becomes queen but her perils do not end there. England is weak and bankrupt and she has to play a dangerous political game to avoid being married off to create alliances with the other great European powers, France and Spain. There are also more attempts on her life. Within all of this is a love story between her and Robert, Earl of Dudley, played by Joseph Fiennes, which ends in tears.

The film works so well in that the tension is established early on and continues unabated throughout the film. Cate Blanchett’s performance is a masterclass in moving Elizabeth from a young, selfish and headstrong girl to an assertive, determined and ruthless woman and by the end of the film to a true English icon.

There are many film references. The beginning (yet another Great Beginning) has the same effect as the beginning to Robert Bresson’s Lancelot du Lac where knights fight and kill each other in quite graphic and gory ways over the opening credits of the film. This has the effect of shocking the audience at the beginning and lessens the need for any further gore until much later in the film. At the same time it sets the scene admirably. The burning of the heretics has a similar effect. You are on the edge of your seat from the word go.

The conspiracies at court in Elizabeth mirror the wonderful, swirling court scenes of La Reine Margot, the French film about the massacre of French protestants by the Catholics. The sharp dialogue and the discussions behind closed doors and within the crowds enhance the feeling of foreboding.

Elizabeth even ruthlessly dispatches a number of the conspirators towards the end of the film in a montage sequence not unlike that near the end of The Godfather. However, she leaves her erstwhile lover, Dudley, alive as a reminder of how close she came to death.

Not that the film is totally without humour. There is a hilarious episode where Elizabeth discovers that her French suitor, The Duke of Anjou, is actually a cross dresser. But this is mere comic relief before the tension is ramped up again.

If you like films that have politics, plotting and conspiracy, then Elizabeth is a well-acted piece that delivers. It is a period film but it aspires more to contemporary political thrillers than the English period drama heritage.You are not just wowed with the gowns but the subtlety of the plot and the intrigue woven into the story. It is a very different film to its successor, Elizabeth -The Golden Age, in terms of tone and tension.

Elizabeth is in my list of top films because it has the ingredients for a “great film”. It has an excellent story converted to a riveting screenplay. The acting by the principals is exemplary and believable. Cate Blanchett’s stunning performance shines at the heart of the movie. The direction is sure-footed, without being particularly innovative, and ratchets up the tension at the appropriate points in the film. The film looks good and the period settings don’t disappoint. There are so many pluses to this film that it has to be up in the great films category.

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Westerns – Part 5 – Rebirth

February 3rd, 2010 · Cinematography, Film Criticism and Analysis, Film Directing, Film History, Film Narrative, Genre

The western as a genre was dead until 1989 but was revived by, of all things, a made for TV mini series directed by an Englishman. That series was Lonesome Dove, a four part drama, that rekindled an American love for the western. It was made for the small screen but it had epic ambitions and made the old western traditions seem new and exciting. It is old Hollywood at the heart of it and retreads the traditional story lines making them seem fresh and interesting. The acting is exemplary as Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall bring life and emotion to their characters. It has all the right ingredients, spectacular landscapes, great supporting cast, romance, action and black-hearted villains. It draws you into its world totally. It won two Golden Globes and countless other awards and spawned sequels and spin offs. The American public took it to their heart.

In the same year came one of the best of the recent westerns. Glory was the story of the first black regiment to fight for the North in the civil war and how they overcame prejudice from their own side to gain respect and dignity for blacks in America. Directed by Edward Zwick, it lit the tinderbox for the careers of a young Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman and told a moving story about the difficulties faced by them and the young white officer charged with leading their regiment.  The ending always brings a lump to my throat when I see it. Oscar glory followed with 3 gongs for best supporting actor (Washington) and best cinematography (Freddie Francis).

Westerns became cool again. The next year we were treated to Dances With Wolves (1990), a stirring Kevin Costner western, looking at prairie life from the point of view of the native Americans and a disaffected cavalry officer. Costner collected 2 Oscars for it and went on to make other westerns but never reached the heights that he did with this film. Open Range was a return to form but Dances With Wolves was the pinnacle.

Clint Eastwood successfully returned to westerns in 1992 both acting in and directing Unforgiven. This film was a gritty and realistic account of how Clint’s character is paid to avenge the disfigurement of a prostitute. It is a character-led piece with occasional bursts of explosive and bloody action. The supporting cast are pitch perfect and some of the myths of the west are exposed. It won 4 Oscars including best picture and best director.

Gettysburg (1993) directed by Ronald F. Maxwell recreated the famous civil war battle and gained many admirers for its attention to detail and stirring battle scenes. It also spawned a prequel – Gods and Generals (2003) – showing the events leading up to civil war.

So the western is alive and well and can still thrive in the mainstream. When Spielberg does mini series about westerns (Into The West) and old stories can be reinvigorated to reach a new generation then it will always have a place in Hollywood.

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Westerns – Part 4 – Demise

February 3rd, 2010 · Film General

The western died out in the early 1980s following the monumental disaster of Heaven’s Gate (1980). Not only did it bring a film studio to its knees financially but it made other studios extremely wary of investing in the genre. The underlying reasons though are not so much about the financial profligacy of the film but the fact the American public did not want to hear the message of the film which washed the country’s dirty linen in public. The Johnson County Wars was a particularly shameful and sensitive subject where the authorities sanctioned the murder of immigrant settlers. The film maker, Michael Cimino, who had had unbridled success with Vietnam film, The Deer Hunter, was given free reign to make a film exposing this dark period of American history. It flopped at the box office. The studio fell and Cimino was ostracised for many years. There is a previous post that goes into more detail.

But it could be argued that this was only the final nail in the coffin of the western at that time. In an attempt to find new story lines, film makers were starting to trawl the later period of the western era. This is when the west was becoming less wild and more civilised and the corporations were beginning to move in. Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969) was almost an elegy for the old style cowboys who felt the cold hand of progress on them and foreshadowed the demise of the western. They were old misfits in a changing world. The same could be said in many ways for the earlier Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). The march of progress in America caught up with them and they had to move to Bolivia to recreate the old days.

The Missouri Breaks (1976) provided another downbeat addition to the genre albeit a quirky battle of the acting egoes that were Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando. The tale has similarities to the later Tom Horn in that a “regulator”, Marlon Brando, is hired by a wealthy and sophisticated rancher to deter rustlers. Tom Horn (1980) starring Steve McQueen as the titular lead encapsulates this downbeat fall of the western empire. His character is an old style cowboy turned “regulator” of rustlers who eventually falls foul of the new power in the land – big business. Hollywood was providing its own epitaph for the western.

Heaven’s Gate was just the clincher and it would be nearly a decade before another significant western would be made.

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Westerns – Part 3 – Easterns

February 3rd, 2010 · Cinematography, Film Authorship, Film Criticism and Analysis, Film Directing, Film History, Film Narrative, Film Sound, Genre

John Ford’s westerns have influenced so many directors throughout the world so it was not so much of a surprise when “westerns” started being made outside the Hollywood system.

The most famous mutation of the traditional western was the spaghetti western. These were films made largely in Europe (Spain being the most believable location to double as Arizona or Texas) by Italians mainly that created an identifiable sub genre with its own characteristics.

Important directors on the world stage came out of this movement such as Sergio Leone and Bernardo Bertolucci. Leone put his case forward as one of the world’s great directors with such films as the Fistful of Dollars trilogy and Once upon a Time in the West, a candidate for the greatest western of all time. Bertolucci, at this stage in his career was involved as a scriptwriter for Leone and emerged later on as a fine director in his own right outside the western genre.

There were scores of spaghetti westerns made during the period 1965-1980. They were recognisable for their stylistic differences to the traditional westerns. In particular, the use of closeups of the characters’ expressive faces usually dripping with sweat or smoking a cigarette before an explosively violent scene ramped up the tension in these westerns. The villains were colourful and hideous and psychopathic. No horrific act was out of their range. They even made that Hollywood western stalwart, Henry Fonda, into a steely-eyed child killer in the epic Once Upon a Time in the West.

Heroes were not the archetypal heroes of old westerns. They were much more complex. More like anti heroes. Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name in the Fistful of Dollars trilogy typifies this. He is probably the least disagreeable character in the film but is no angel himself. In Once Upon  a Time in the West the main protagonists are symbols more than characters telling the painful story of the opening up of the west. None is without sin but there is a chance of redemption by the end for some of them.

Spaghetti westerns are violent and sometimes unpredictable interms of plot and ending. One notable example of this is The Great Silence directed by Sergio Corbucci. It is sometimes referred to as the Alpine western with its backdrop of mountains and snow and is a very dark tale with a completely miserable ending. No heroes riding off into the sunset here. Very little light relief during the film aswell. Italian directors were definitiely experimenting with stories, characters and visuals to create unique films that could still be called westerns.

No self-respecting spaghetti western was complete without a quirky yet mesmerising soundtrack from Ennio Morricone that emphasised the difference between this western and the traditional Hollywood western. Sometimes beautiful and evocative, sometimes downright irritating, Morricone’s soundtracks make the spaghetti westerns even more distinctive.

The western was also influenced from further east, Japan. Hollywood film makers saw the upsurge of spaghetti westerns and knew they would have to up their game. So they looked for new storylines and John Sturges used Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai as the template for The Magnificent Seven. Both of these films were successful in their own genre. Leone used the basic plot of Yojimbo directed by Kurosawa as his base line for A Fistful of Dollars. And yet Kurosawa openly acknowledged his regard for John Ford’s westerns. So chicken… egg?

Despite all the critical acclaim given to westerns, all was not well. By the mid 1980s the western was dead as a genre. Nobody was making significant western films. What happened? I’ll talk about that next time.

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Westerns – Part 2 – John Ford

February 2nd, 2010 · Cinematography, Film Authorship, Film Criticism and Analysis, Film Directing, Film History, Genre

Westerns have been around since the  era of silent film. They have been the staple of early cinema and early TV. I can remember watching many western series on the box during the sixties such as Wagon Train, Gunsmoke, Rawhide and many more.

But the western started to become more of an art form in cinema when John Ford made his Cavalry trilogy in the forties and fifties. They coined the term “horse opera” and could be seen as works of art. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Fort Apache and Rio Grande all  had the panache of a director at the top of his game with action and the western genre.

However, the most important film he made was The Searchers bringing out a performance by John Wayne, his long time leading man, which is the best of his career. The Searchers also uses the interiors and exteriors to suggest danger and isolation both physical and psychological with a strong performance by the supporting cast. It explores the issues of racism, friendship, loss and grief within the boundaries of the the western genre. It is probably the most complete western film of all time – strong in story, cinematic image, action and acting.

Perhaps the most over-looked and under-rated John Ford western is My Darling Clementine. Someone described it as more of a poem than a story. More lyrical in pace and narrative. It was a retelling of the gunfight at the OK corral but uses pacing and imagery to provide a unique beat to the film. A gem of a film by a master director.

And who can forget John Ford’s initiation into westerns with Stagecoach giving an young and then unknown actor called John Wayne his big break.

Later period John Ford westerns such as The Horse Soldiers, Sergeant Rutledge and Two Rode Together did not hit the heights of the earlier films although there was a brief return to form in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. He did direct the civil war segment of How The West Was Won and finished his westerns with Cheyenne Autumn, an unusual film of its time that looked at the west from the point of view of the native Americans. This was ground-breaking in its day.

A John Ford western could be characterised by ravishing visuals of the landscape with Monument Valley providing the inevitable backdrop in many of his westerns. Dust and desert, sunrises and sunsets, rousing soundtracks and music, exquisite action and horsemanship, strong story lines and usually some humorous scenes to counter balance the serious and dangerous aspects of the film. He blended it together to produce moving and rousing entertainment and, some would argue, high art as well. He is one of the first “auteurs” as he had his own signature on most of his films. That indelible stamp influenced many directors that followed and was the baseline of development for the western genre.

Post John Ford westerns started to diversify but all owed a debt of gratitude to Ford for setting the benchmark by which westerns were to be measured.

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Westerns – Part 1

February 1st, 2010 · Film Criticism and Analysis, Film Narrative, Genre, Screenwriting

I haven’t really posted anything about genres so far so I thought I would start with one of my favourite genres – the western. Genres are a way of categorizing films that have a loose set of similar characteristics. They are inevitably vague with flexible boundaries but include sets of conventions that recur in many films. We all like to categorise things, books, music, people etc. So how would we categorise westerns?

The western is as old as Hollywood and is indigenous to America but has influenced many film makers across the world and in turn has itself been influenced by other genres and non US film makers. The development of the western has lead to a genre with many familiar characteristics and stories.

How would you categorize a film as a western?

  • Does it have to be set in that period of history between, say, 1800 and 1910 when the country of America was being opened up by white settlers and immigrants?
  • Does it have to have cowboys on horses (and, sometimes, “injuns” or native Americans) as the dominant characters?
  • Does the film have to be set in the wild and wide open spaces of the mid west prairies, or the dusty expanses of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas or the high country of Montana or Utah?
  • Does it have to have recognisable characters – the lone cowboy hero, the black-hearted villain, the wise-cracking tart with the heart of gold, the bar tender, the farming sod buster etc.
  • Do guns and violence have to be included in the story?

These are just a few of the things you expect in a traditional western. However, if you pare it back and generalise a little bit there are some key themes that recur in westerns and add to the composition of the genre.

Firstly, the natural world, the environment makes a big contribution to the western genre. Who can forget the iconic images of Monument Valley in the John Ford westerns? The environment is a character which can be helpful or unforgiving to the humans in the film. Big skies, stunning landscapes wild and beautiful. Westerns are about celebrating or taming the natural world of the west. One of my old teachers said it could be seen as gardening! Man’s struggle against the natural elements.

The western tends to have recognisable heroes and villains because it is on the edge of civilisation. We are in the wild west where lawlessness is common. Some people flout the law and others try to enforce it. In the absence of recognised law enforcement, the characters make their own rules. The code of the west. Horse thieves are hung and a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.

The west is a man’s world. The land of the lone cowboy. The embodiment of the American dream. There are riches out there for you but you have to carve it out yourself. A land of opportunity and danger. The corporations have not got there yet. Few women are seen other than fiances coming to meet their beaus from the civilised east or prostitutes making a living above the saloon from the roving cowboys.

The probability of conflict and violence is high. Most men carry guns. It is easy to pick arguments. There are no wine bars out here, the saloon is a dangerous place. The army is tasked with surpressing the indigenous tribes. Settlers are harrassed by the locals. Sheep herders fight with cow barons. Authority is always mistrusted.

In terms of story types there are several staples. The western is a fertile ground to grow a revenge plot. Unforgiven shows the revenge plot is alive and well in westerns. The cattle drive is usually an epic journey and vehicle for redemption for one or more of the characters. Red River and Lonesome Dove spring to mind as examples. Clash of cultures between the original inhabitants and the newcomers. Dances with Wolves and Cheyenne Autumn are good examples of this. Survival is a key element in many stories about the west – survival against the natural environment or survival against the hostiles. Just watch A Man Called Horse. It is about man’s humanity being tested in harsh and uncontrolled conditions. Basic and raw emotions are on show. There are few nuances here. Only big bold issues.

In the next post I will explore a little how the western has developed over time and its worldwide influence. I will also look at the interesting phenomenon of cross genre films.

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Brilliant Beginnings

December 18th, 2009 · Cinematography, Film Directing, Film Editing, Film Narrative, Screenwriting

A film lives or dies by its beginning. If you haven’t hooked the audience within the first twenty minutes it is an uphill battle from then on. The first twenty minutes of a film are crucial to its success artistically and, no doubt, financially. A brilliant beginning can make a good film great or a mediocre film good.

This post just sprang to mind as I have watched a few classic films recently that serve to illustrate the point very well.

James Cameron does an incredible job with “Aliens”. We see the lifeboat craft drifting aimlessly in space with Ripley and the cat (Jonesy, I think) still in suspended animation. The door is then burnt open as they are rescued by a deep space salvage team. As Ripley recuperates on a space station near earth, Cameron uses an inventive dream sequence to wrong foot the audience. Ripley’s mind is messed up and we begin to empathise with her immediately particularly as no one seems to want to believe her about the existence of the alien monsters. It’s like a pantomime response but very effective. The rest of the cast are saying they don’t exist while Ripley and the audience are effectively shouting “They’re behind you!”. We’ve seen the previous film, we know what they can do. Even worse to come, as Ripley is “on trial” for destroying the Nostromo and she loses her pilot licence. How unfair, we say. And she finds out that she has been in hypersleep for around seventy years. Her child has grown up, lived a full life and died before she returned. How terrible for her. We are hooked! And then she finds out that the planet where the alien craft crashed is now colonised by a group of terraformers including families with children. This provides the motivation for Ripley to return to the planet as an advisor (and her need to regain her pilot’s licence).

All this is played out very skilfully through fleshing out the back story with some emotional twists to provide the setting for the rest of the film and draw the audience in for the ride. Excellent.

Another good example of a stunning first twenty minutes is a film I have mentioned before in these posts – the remake of “Dawn of the Dead” directed by Zak Snyder. All of the George Romero fans know what is about to happen but the way it is achieved is quite stunning. We see the horror unfolding through the eyes of the nurse (Sarah Polley) as she is coming to the end of her shift at the hospital.  This is inter-cut with newsreels of unrest in the world gradually expanding into anarchy. We’ve all seen news items with video of riots and conflict before. But it quickly shows us that the anarchy is due to a mysterious infection. The nurse unwittingly goes about her routine and leaves the hospital just as patients start arriving with the infection. As she leaves the hospital we see the legs of a man sticking out from an ambulance. Is he infected? Is he dead? No, he’s just resting before the next call out. Phew! The audience starts feeling for the safety of the nurse. Something bad is happening. We know but does she? We want to shout out to warn her.

Cut to suburbia and her car driving back home. Nothing yet to suggest anything abnormal although the tension has been ramped up through the unease felt earlier. She has a conversation with a little girl. But there is a tangible unease established. She is the innocent about to be threatened. She arrives home and goes to sleep with her husband. All is normal until they are woken up by a hungry zombie who just happens to be the little girl she talked to before. Her husband is bitten and turns into a zombie and in turn tries to bite her! Talk about a maiden in peril. She manages to narrowly escape out of the bathroom window and get into her car only to be confronted by a scene of utter carnage and mayhem with neighbours shooting, killing and eating each other, cars crashing and fires breaking out all over suburbia.

The scenes are so effective because that is so like our home, a comforting if boring environment to return to at the end of a hard day’s work. Yet again we are drawn into the story with great skill. In this film,  our “little castle”, our homely comfort blanket has been ripped to shreds at the beginning of the film and we are empathising with the nurse, frightened and at a loss to know what to do next. The rape and mutilation of our home life is shown graphically in the film in a series of scenes as the Sarah Polley character tries to drive out of her suburban estate. Neighbours with guns shooting at anything, homicidal zombies chase the living to taste their flesh, cars collide and crash. There is even an aerial shot (with CGI) showing the mayhem from the air. Will she survive, or won’t she? Who will save her? Or, how will she save herself from this insidious disaster? Brilliant set up for the rest of the film.

Perhaps, one of the most brilliant beginnings to a film must be “Apocalypse Now”. In the opening sequence over the credits, we are shown a patch of jungle with instrumental music from the Doors (The End) playing on the soundtrack. It evokes an oriental and exotic feeling. We hear helicopters whizzing overhead and suddenly the jungle bursts into flames. We know, without a spoken word, we are in Vietnam in the late 1960s early 1970s. Brilliantly concise use of images and sound to set the scene for the movie. If that wasn’t good enough we are treated to a second sequence where the back story is narrated by the Martin Sheen character, a burnt-out special forces assassin on the edge of sanity who, as we find later can only find normality and comfort when on a “mission”, in this case the assassination of a renegade American colonel leading a native army against the North Vietnamese. There are many questions asked in the film about who is sane in a world of insanity and this beginning sets the scene beautifully for the journey to the heart of darkness.

One last and very different example is “Babel” – a recent film which weaves a story that spans a number of different countries and cultures. It intrigues the audience. It starts several seemingly unrelated stories cutting between them and as an audience we begin to feel curious about where this is going. Each story is interesting in its own right but we are not asked to empathise with the charcters involved. It is more intellectual. How are these stories connected? The director gradually unveils the connections throughout the film in very clever ways but you do not know the whole story until the end. It uses the audience’s collective curiosity to establish commitment and interest in the film.

Getting the audience involved as early as possible through emotion, curiosity or clever use of visuals and symbol can set the tone for the rest of the film.

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Website Unavailability – Normal Service Resumes

October 4th, 2009 · Film General

Apologies. The website has been down for some time due to some malicious code causing problems. I have only just managed to get it back up and running with a little help from Hostgator. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.

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Old Boy – Asian Extremism

July 25th, 2009 · Film Authorship, Film Criticism and Analysis, Film Directing, Film Narrative, Genre

I watched Old Boy directed by Park Chan Wook, a Korean director, the other night in the comfort of my own home. I do like a bit of variety and it had been advertised on the Film Four Friday Night Shocks spot

“Interesting” doesn’t come near to describing this film of extremes. It is an assault on the senses, a real shocker in the true sense of the word. I don’t know whether I liked it or not but I will certainly not forget some of the scenes in the film in a hurry.

To pigeonhole it, I suppose you might call it a revenge thriller. You have to admire its bravado and confidence in the cinematography and acting. The premise of the movie is that the central character has been imprisoned in a room for 15 years and it follows his escape and his attempts to find out who imprisoned him and why. If you can suspend disbelief at the start it becomes a roller coaster of a film charting the effect on him of regaining his freedom and his eventual search and revenge on his captor.

There are scenes of extreme torture, memorable fight sequences, graphic sex and one scene where the central character eats a live octopus! The tentacles were still wriggling around his chin during the scene. And there is a twist involving incest near the end which heightens the extreme nature of the film.

The acting is very good. “Over the top” works very well in this film and seems normal. It is not a film for subtle acting. The screenplay on the face of it should not work as it is unbelievable and it is difficult to empathise with most of the characters. The plot is convoluted but if you can stay with it (I got lost a couple of times but regained it later) it has a feel of “Seven” about it especially with the late realisation of a horrific act.

There are some wonderfully realised scenes during the film, quite bretahtaking really. Some of the earlier scenes showing his madness during captivity and the 2D fight sequence as the “hero” fights his way through a dozen or so thugs to reach the end of a corridor show a very creative visual force behind the film. This force is ever present during the movie and is surely the work of the director Park Chan Wook.

Why is it that Asian film directors are so adept at creating such gut-churning violence and shocks? And then Hollywood does a remake that sanitises the film to make it palatable for western audiences. The shocks are not the “jump out of your seat” variety but more the “why would you ever consider showing THAT!” variety.

But with Old Boy you have a director who is clearly gifted in translating the implausible narrative into a coherent set of images and scenes that draw you into the film. You have to admire the creative force that spawned this movie, his confidence with the extreme subject matter and his mastery of the film making arts.

Whether you like the movie… well that’s another matter.

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New Look

July 9th, 2009 · Film General

Just a quick post about the new look of the blog. I was quite happy with the other look but this is one of the drawbacks (and maybe advantages) of Wordpress. The theme I was using just wasn’t compatible with the new version of Wordpress so…. it has had to be changed.  It posed a problem or, maybe,  an opportunity.  I hope you like the new look!

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